


Asset

by haliyam



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Manga Spoilers, Season 4 Spoilers, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29739390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haliyam/pseuds/haliyam
Summary: Levi slips into the Liberio internment zone during the festival and finds himself distracted.
Relationships: Levi Ackerman & Original Character(s), Levi Ackerman & Original Female Character(s), Levi Ackerman & Reader, Zeke Yeager/Original Character(s), Zeke Yeager/Original Female Character(s), Zeke Yeager/Reader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 66





	Asset

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I recently got back into the series and couldn’t get this out of my head. This is actually part of a series I'm hoping to write (brain willing), but this can stand alone as well if you want. I wanted to have a go at writing this scene from (mostly) Levi's perspective. It's also my first go at 2nd person POV in a long time, so I hope it's not too rough. XD
> 
> The Reader/OC will be a cis-female Eldian character with a set background only hinted at here. Reader’s default name is Lucy, just because I personally don’t like writing ‘Y/N,’ but please feel free to set the substitution for Lucy to you or your character’s First Name using the [InteractiveFics browser extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/interactivefics/pcpjpdomcbnlkbghmchnjgeejpdlonli?hl=en)! So on the browser extension that would be:  
> Lucy = Your or your character's First Name.  
> Because reader will have a set background, you'll have a set surname as well.

Jean looks around, tilting the brim of his hat forward just before they cover his eyes. “You sure about this, Captain?”

“Nothing wrong with making sure they haven’t caught on,” Levi nods, adjusting the lapel of his jacket. “Or that that bastard hasn’t changed his mind and informed on us to his superiors.”

Jean’s eyes flicker to his at the very thought. He spots a familiar hesitation in them, but it’s quickly fettered away with a nod. When Levi is sure he has nothing more to say, he returns it, and Jean departs for the crowd with a casual swagger that belies his doubt.

Levi hasn’t asked them their opinions on this operation. Of course, they’ve all offered it anyway—but Hange has decided, and he trusts their decision. On that point, the Scouts had all agreed. 

Today the internment zone gates are open to all visitors, Eldian or not. Triangular streamers of all colors canopy the streets, and flutes and drums and instruments he’s never heard sound out in joyous cacophony in the near distance, tempting curious ears from beyond the gates. The festival is definitely a trap—but admittedly, a beautiful one. He’s never seen this much cheer since Historia’s ascension, or maybe since they retook Wall Maria. Back then he hadn’t exactly participated, much less left his quarters until it was later and Hange insisted he show himself… but this celebration is in full swing. Between Jean, Connie, and Sasha, Jean was the best choice to bring along. He’s the most likely to stay on track.

...Which is why it shames Levi when he’s caught off guard staring into a stall filled with all kinds of … food, he can only guess. Onyankopon introduced them to new desserts, but this is different. Bright and vivid, the tangy scent of them fills the air, but they’re not lollipops or candy or chocolate. He was supposed to turn the corner into an alley right before this one when he spotted it, and now…

“Here.”

A packet of one of the strange desserts is shoved into his face so quickly that he almost darts back. He reins it in at the last minute, only fixing a glare upon whoever dared invade his personal space like that, much less present themselves as a threat.

You.

A young woman in a simple dress, hand clasped around a packet of mouth-watering orange-yellow strips of the stuff. 

“Here,” you smile politely, apparently unfazed by the suspicion he levels at you.

“What is that?”

“Dried mangoes,” you reply, taking a step or two closer to let your arm relax. “You were looking at them, right? They come chocolate-covered, too, but I say try these before the other variants.”

He doesn’t answer. The people manning the stalls beneath the vivid tents in the festival have all been _overly_ friendly, but that’s par for the course, and they know to turn to their next prospective customer when he quickly walks past. Damn his own eyes. They almost make him regret his rule not to accept anything from anyone unvetted. “No thanks.”

Now you give him a different look. A curious one, which makes him almost curse under his breath. He’s supposed to blend in; not draw attention to himself. Levi turns away, heading down the road again and meaning to turn for the alley once he’s shaken you, but you’re already walking next to him.

“Have we met?” you ask, still looking at him.

“No.” He thinks he would remember if you had. And this isn’t good. Now you’ll try to commit his face to memory.

But you look away instead as you bar his way once more—down, to be specific, so you can fish a small piece of the dessert from the packet and take a bite. “Not poisoned,” you promise, clearly biting back a grin while you pause to chew. Infuriatingly, you begin to mirror his squint. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”

He stares at you, and is still deciding between bewilderment or irritation when you continue, “It’s not a bad thing. I’m glad that you decided to drop by.”

“What?”

At least the look he gives you makes you recoil just a little now. That’s more what Levi is accustomed to. But it doesn’t stop you from talking. “You’re not from the zone,” you answer, motioning to his bandless left arm. “Not many outsiders want to come, in spite of the festival… so thank you for giving it a chance.”

You extend your arm again, your hand and the packet almost touching his chest in this renewed offer. 

He really shouldn’t be doing this. He should be pointing you toward a distraction and leaving, or otherwise putting you off to the extent that you voluntarily leave him alone yourself. But the hope in your gaze is too tender to spoil, reminds him of too many in the past who deserved more than him to be here now—or it’s the festival getting to him. 

With a sigh, Levi takes a strip of dried mango from the packet and watches your lips curve upward into a bright smile. He shakes his head, barely just stopping from rolling his eyes as he thinks about how you probably picked a dessert far too sweet for his tastes—but he’s in for another shock when he takes a bite and finds it sour instead. Well, sweet in parts and sour in others. It’s different, but he doesn’t dislike it at all.

It must show on his face as he chews, which is terrible, because you take it as an invitation to speak again. “They’re from the northwestern archipelago. Eldia never conquered much of that continent—and thank goodness for that,” you seem to add quickly for good measure, “but it did pick up a few of their delicacies. It’s common Eldian fare whenever they’re in season.”

“I see,” he says, just to be forgettable. “Thank you.” It’s likely that being rude will make someone like you remember him more, and that isn’t his goal here today. As he swallows the strip (it was too small), Levi almost doesn’t notice you nudging him forward toward the next stall. But he does, and he gives you a look. “What do you think you’re doing?”

You grin sheepishly, knowing you’ve been caught. “I never meet non-Eldians within the zone. Especially none like you. I'm going to tour you around the stalls a little - I know the scents might be confusing, and the armbands are… well. But there are good, honest people here.”

“That so?” the remark is aimed toward you, because his suspicions remain, but he realizes his mistake when your eyes look even more earnest than before.

“There are. And good food, as you can tell,” you say proudly. You offer him the packet again. “Let me show you.”

He should really get going. He and Jean mean to rendezvous in an hour, and he still hasn’t left the festival grounds. 

But the look in your eyes tells him you’re going to be very annoying if he refuses. Or maybe that’s what he tells himself when he lets you.

This is how Levi finds himself guided around the festival that afternoon, getting all sorts of history lessons on food (and tea) as he tries them - but only bites, and very reluctantly of course, because he doesn’t care to get too full before tonight, when his stomach has already begun to turn. It’s that he knows he has no right to enjoy himself with the novelty of this event, with the optimism in your quiet laughter when he balks at the spicy undercurrent in the skewer of meat you have the audacity to stick into his hand. Not when he knows what’s going to happen tonight. Not when he doesn’t even know your name.

You tell him, finally, when you take a break by a quiet corner in the festival. Over here they’re selling older Eldian art pieces, some painted and others carved figurines, and the scent of lacquered wood faintly invades his senses. He gets a brief respite only when you lean closer to him to let a passing merchant through. _Lilies._ “I’m Lucy. I thought you should know the name of your tour guide.”

The name sounds familiar. It’s probably a common one he heard during their last visit. 

You’re holding your hand out to him, expectation now in your gaze. He’s clearly spoiled you.

Levi stares at your hand. He doesn’t care to shake it, but again—better to be forgettable. He wracks his mind for a name.

“Kenny.”

 _Kenny?_ Levi inwardly sighs.

“It’s nice to meet you, Kenny.” You exchange a good, solid handshake, but you are quick to pull away immediately after. Why? Has he been compromised?

He hopes not, as you give him a reassuring smile and look ahead. At the far, far end of the next avenue is the plaza where the crowds will settle tonight, but you can’t see it from here. “Are you here for Willy’s play tonight?”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“Between you and me,” you say, leaning just a bit closer again as you move on from the area and smile at a waving shopkeep, “It’s probably going to be boring. I would leave after the festival.”

Levi looks down at you, meets your gaze with a critical eye for the first time since your meeting. He ignores the way the afternoon sun sets a golden highlight around your hair. “You think so?”

If you notice, you deflect his look with a little snort. “The Tyburs,” you almost spit the name, with a venom not unfamiliar to someone in his line of work but uncharacteristic enough of what he’s seen of you that he spares you a blink. “The Tybur family’s official policy is to leave the rest of the Eldians on the wayside while they live in their beautiful estates. Why speak now?” Your hand, gentle all this time paying the vendors, passing him food, tossing it in your mouth, now clenches at your side. “He’s a _coward_. So…”

You trail off, biting your tongue as you turn away briefly. Hatred is something far too familiar for Levi to balk at, and so he doesn’t. Because it wasn’t hatred he saw in your eyes, but a strange defeat. He has to wonder, but he stops himself before he can. That will be moot after tonight.

“He’s saying something now,” he replies blankly, letting you hear the shrug in his tone. He doesn’t really care to defend someone with only a few hours left to live, but maybe he feels guilty for knowing even that much. Death has always been a certainty in his life, but the how and the when? “Some people never say anything at all.”

His words break you out of your stupor. It appears you weren’t really talking to him after all, but now he wishes he bit his tongue. The idea of you leaving before the play actually sounds like a good one, and he should not have gainsaid it.

“I suppose you have a point,” you say, looking slightly abashed at your outburst. Sighing, you gesture around the area. “So what do you think? Not bad for a home of devils, right?”

The question has him turning toward you so sharply that you begin to squirm under his gaze. The truth is you’ve been able to deflect his uninterested, even hostile expressions so far, but this one is new. His eyes are walled off for the most part, but a telling indignation flashes across his grey eyes so quickly you wonder if you even saw it. He sees it in the way you search them.

You gulp and then clear your throat. “I lived here when I was younger,” you explain, appearing both frightened and encouraged. Ultimately unable to withstand his gaze, you start to walk again, down the road toward the plaza. 

He hardly notices himself following suit. “You left?” _You were allowed to?_

“My family isn’t from Liberio,” you admit, slowing to keep apace. “I came here to join the Warrior program when I was little.”

Now the expression in his eyes is indecipherable, but curiosity gives it the smallest edge as his gaze flits to your armband. Pale grey, almost white. 

“I didn’t make it,” you say, quickly, since bringing up Marley’s prized Warriors with anyone from outside of the _motherland_ is an awful idea this soon, “so I was called back home. But I had fond memories of this place, all things considered, and now I’ve chosen it as mine.”

A strange feeling now worms its way into Levi’s chest. He’s already managed to shut off his thoughts and apprehensions about tonight’s operation - they can’t afford doubts, after all, and anyway those have never stopped him from getting the job done - but it makes him uncomfortable.

“Where do you live?” _Will you be spared the worst of it?_

You look surprised, but you smile all the same. “A few blocks from here. An old doctor and his family let me stay with them when I was little, and I still stay there now. Now I… work at the hospital in the zone.”

“You’re a doctor too?”

The question seems to dismay you. “Not exactly.”

He frowns before he can help it. “You’re pretty dodgy for a tour guide.”

Now you can’t help but laugh in what almost looks like offense. “Me? I’m the one who’s been talking about myself, between the two of us,” you say, your indignation diluted with your ringing mirth. It sounds clearly over the din. “I don’t even know where you’re from!”

“You do. Not here.”

Levi feels the side of his mouth quirk when you laugh at such a small remark, but you manage to get a hold of yourself before he can respond. 

You meet his gaze again, shaking your head in disbelief, and something appears to click in your mind as your lips part with revelation. 

“You’re a war veteran, aren’t you?’

Levi graces you with another blink. “What?”

“I won’t ask where,” you promise again, raising a hand in surrender. “You just remind me of someone I’ve met at the hospital.”

He quirks a brow. “How should I take that?”

“Oh! Not as an insult!” you laugh again, covering your mouth, but your lips are pursed, still stifling another smile when you lower your hand. It takes another moment for you to compose yourself. “I meant rather that… you have soulful eyes.”

His _soulful_ eyes stare straight at you, utterly deadpan. “Soulful.”

You stand by it, clearly suppressing mirth again. “Soulful.”

Levi sighs with some exasperation, as if to wonder how his life choices have led to him having to put up with all this, and it must be the most you’ve gotten out of this man since you interrupted his consideration of those snacks. Somehow you can tell that even his irritation should flatter you. “Anyway,” you say, when he seems resigned to all this, “if you aren’t completely sold on watching the play tonight, maybe you can drop by the hospital instead.”

Levi narrows his eyes at you. “Why would I do that?”

“Well… we don’t get visitors often. But the patients always appreciate them.” After a pause, you add, “Not always. But even just sitting with them is something.”

His furrowed brow relaxes. Not that he’ll be able to say yes - not that he wants to - and not that he’s ever cared all that much for bleeding hearts. It’s really more the determination in your gaze that gets him. Like you’re not exactly going to take no for an answer, or worse, and maybe closer to his heart, that you refuse to let the possibility cross your mind. 

“There’s one patient I would love to introduce to you,” you continue, when you catch the hesitation in his silence. “He calls himself K—“

“Lucy?”

A familiar voice calls your name from amid the crowd. The smile that simply illuminates your features as you turn to look over your shoulder draws Levi’s eyes to yours rather than to your mouth this time.

Before you can look, a pair of arms encircles your waist, a beard nuzzling your neck while you squirm and laugh, trying to elbow your way out of the embrace to no avail. It’s token resistance that leads only to his nose nudging at your jaw, mouth grazing your neck. “Zeke, stop!”

“So this is where you’ve been hiding,” he murmurs, his glasses nudging your cheek, whisper tickling your skin. “Meeting ran late. You know how Magath is.”

“I know,” you say as you manage to wrangle your way out of his grasp. “But please don’t do that in front of my new—“

You glance to the side with an apology ready for him, but Levi has disappeared. Your hands grasp Zeke’s sleeve for balance as you get on your tiptoes, but you cannot spot his hat among the crowd.

“—friend.” You frown. “He was just here.” 

Zeke quirks a brow. “Who?”

“Kenny,” you say. “He was wearing a dark suit and a fedora. Just a little taller than me, black hair… you didn’t see him? And—are you all right?” You reach for his fingers, kneading at the pads of them with yours. “Your hands are so cold.”

Zeke shakes his head, dismissing your second question. “A little taller than you,” he enunciates instead, withdrawing his hands to make a show of stroking his beard. “So did I see another runt? The answer is no, sorry.”

You give his hip a light smack. “I’m not a runt. I’m taller than Pieck!”

“By an inch.” When you make a face at him, Zeke smiles, hands pawing at your shoulders before running down your back and pulling you to him, your chest flush against the wall of his stomach. “Do you want us to look for your Kenny?” he asks, his thumb ghosting your lip. 

“He’s not my Kenny,” you give him a look, even though he knows his hands are already giving you other ideas. His other one is stroking your waist. “I just thought he looked lost.”

“My bleeding heart,” he says fondly. “You can’t save everyone.”

You shoot him a look that he ignores. This isn’t the place to get into that discussion, so you shrug it off. “I guess I _was_ imposing on him. At one point he seemed like he’d rather drink rotten milk than listen to me. I just thought we’d built a rapport...”

Zeke snorts. “Okay, okay. _I’ll_ listen to you.”

You squint at him. “Don’t let me twist your arm.”

He grins, leaning closer to whisper in your ear. “I think I let you do a lot more to me than just that, Miss Blanchard.”

The flush that predictably spreads across your face makes him laugh, that warm, hearty chuckle that makes your knees weak. He bends down to touch your lips with his, smiling when you seek his mouth to deepen the kiss. Your hand fists around his shirt, the slightest hum of enjoyment from your throat drawing him further into your thrall, but the nudge of a passerby makes him pull away after a moment. His lips envy the disappointed pout that seizes yours as he closes your hand around his. Zeke lifts it to plant a more chaste kiss to your knuckles in apology. 

“But before all that,” he says, “how about that festival date you promised me?”

Zeke gives you a questioning look, as though a part of him might actually doubt that you’ll say yes. Really it’s that he wonders if you’ll still gaze at him with those tender eyes this time tomorrow, but you can’t possibly know that. 

You shrug, intertwining your fingers with his. “I’ll let you twist my arm.”

“You let me do a lot more—“

“Yeager...”

“Heh heh.” He withdraws his hand so he can wrap an arm around you instead as he guides you back to the heart of the festival. “I ran into the others while looking for you. The kids wouldn’t shut up about some good wrap nearby—and while their faces were full of pizza. What do you think?” 

You lean against him, unable to help the warmth that you practically radiate as he holds you. He knows it too, pulling you closer. You shrug him off briefly to take a last glance around for Kenny, but he really is nowhere to be found. 

Ducking back under Zeke’s arm, you smile. “Why not?”

Out of sight, trying to stave off the nausea, Levi watches the pair of you walk away from beside one of the many festival stands littering the avenue. How couldn’t he have realized who you are? Lucy is the name of the asset that sack of shit wants retrieved before the operation begins. He had wondered why, thought it some political ploy that would come into play later on. He didn’t expect the reason to be so... mundane.

He can’t believe he almost felt worried. He knew there had to be something strange about you, ignoring how he was clearly trying to get away. Had you been taunting him? A trap, just like this festival?

It hadn’t seemed like it. Your smile appeared to be genuine.

Not that it matters. He gets smiles all the time that he doesn’t care for; why should a beautiful woman’s remain with him or be any more noteworthy than another’s? 

Dismissing the sight lingering in his mind’s eye, Levi turns for his true objective. He’s wasted enough time. 

...And anyway, any person who would take up with that monster probably has some skeletons of her own.

Levi supposes he’ll find out later. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> The series I mentioned that this may be part of should be Zeke/Reader or Zeke/OC, but because Levi is very tempting, I'm also planning a Levi/Reader AU of the ending post-rumbling (we'll see). Let me know which pairing you'd be interested in, if you are! I'll likely write it chronologically otherwise.


End file.
